Amazon.com and its subsidiaries generated some $24.51 billion in net sales in 2009, making it one of the largest Internet retailers. The majority of those sales, including $200 million from the recently acquired Zappos.com, were ecommerce related.
It is fair to say that Amazon is one of our industry's pioneers and innovators. I have always been impressed with the company's superb marketing. So with Amazon's success in mind, I thought I'd share with you what I like and dislike about Amazon.com. I'll list my dislikes first so that we end on a positive note. I also want to note that I am in no way the arbiter of all ecommerce truth; at least some of my likes and dislikes are subjective. I really like the "Look Inside" feature that others may find distracting. Likewise, I find the home page lacking aesthetically, but others might liken it to a Botticelli.
After you've read my likes and dislikes about Amazon, please tell me your own in the comments below.
Amazon Dislikes
A Bland Home Page
Amazon's home page, in my opinion, is bland. The company has chosen to show lots of product images and feature its Kindle reader on the home page. The result is a crowded, less than visually interesting home page. It is especially lacking in humanity. From a company that seeks to be the most "customer-centric on earth" it would be great to see at least one human face on the home page, confirming that I am dealing with people not just a mega-retailer.
Inconsistent Product Imagery
I understand that Amazon has a lot of products, but from a company with many billions of dollars in sales, I can and do expect better quality and more consistent product imagery. But Amazon often uses images with vastly different backgrounds, scale, and level of quality. For example, many of the product photos on Amazon have colored backgrounds and others have transparent backgrounds. Some product images are tight shots others are relatively long shots. And because of the difference in background color some shots can appear to be different sizes.
The site also uses images with text overlays from the manufacturer that may or may not make sense in the context of the Amazon site. And its main product images and thumbnails are frequently identical so that overlays like "Look Inside" can be misleading since they only function on the product pages and not on thumbnails.
Too Many Home Page Suggestions
I do generally like the suggestions on Amazon, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. The page shown in the screen capture below had more than 50 product suggestions.
Crazy Long URLs
A search-engine-optimization professional pointed out to me that Amazon uses ridiculously long URLs. If other sites used such long URLs, it would hurt their SEO rankings, so, it seems, being a large brand does help SEO. Here is the URL from a book I looked up.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596802447/ref=s9simhgwp14i2?pfrdm=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pfrds=center-2&pfrdr=1CMANN0MPT890A6GMYZH&pfrdt=101&pfrdp=470938631&pfrdi=507846
Can you imagine emailing that URL to a friend? Not me.
Column Alignment Problems
Generally, Amazon uses a fluid layout, which is probably better than the fixed-width pages that most of us develop. But this multi-billion-dollar merchant with its army of designers and developers, doesn't consistently apply its fluid design. As a result some fixed-width elements can look out of alignment. In the screen below, notice the differences in the width of the white space between columns. The effect is even more noticeable when seen full size. (FYI, I measured these with Photoshop, not by digging through the CSS).
Uninformative Product Detail Pages
Amazon's product pages are often not very informative, and when there is good information like a product description or product reviews, that information is far down on the page.
Amazon Likes
Search Front and Center
A majority of online shoppers will use search to locate products on a retail website, so Amazon rightly puts search front and center.
Good Fly-out Navigation
A like fly-out navigation, and Amazon's vertically oriented navigation is one of my favorites. Also, there is no inline-JavaScript, so bravo to the developer of this feature.
Product Recommendations
Although, as I mentioned above, I do think Amazon can over do it, I like seeing custom product recommendations, specific to my taste. When I visit Amazon using Firefox, which is the browser I use when I shop, I review many books on the use of CSS, JavaScript, and PHP; cameras and lenses; and toys. These are the items I typically shop for. But when I visit Amazon using Chrome or Opera, which are browsers I only use for work, I get the vanilla home page with suggestions like The Apothecary's Daughter, Dead Witch Walking, and God of War III for the PlayStation. None of these appeal to me, so, please Amazon, use the custom product recommendations, but use them in moderation.
Product Focus
Amazon is very product focused, which is generally a good thing on ecommerce sites.
Product Configuration Tools
I am a huge fan of configuration tools that allow customers to describe what product specifications are important to them. Amazon uses this sort of tool in product categories like cameras, where shoppers can select brand, megapixel, optical zoom, and display size. While this particular configuration tool is clearly aimed at novice users—more experienced photographers would be less interested in display size or megapixels—it is a good example of how Amazon tries to improve customer experience.
Content Sliders
With a few exceptions, I don't want to have to scroll down a page too far. I would rather have most of the information up top and readily available. One way that site designers can save vertical space is by using tasteful content sliders. On several pages, Amazon does put content sliders up top, but many of the sites content sliders are "below the fold," which is unfortunate.
Look Inside
I've saved the best for last. My very favorite Amazon book-related feature is "Look Inside." From a book's detail page, hover over the cover image that is marked "Look Inside," and you can get access to samples of the book's contents.
